GENERAL PERCEPTION OF UNIVERSITY STUDENTS ON RELATIONSHIP OF AURAT AZADI MARCH, MEDIA PORTRAYAL AND WOMEN RIGHT

Abstract

Aurat Azadi March refers to a set of movements and activities which aim to represent, establish, and defend the rights of women in Pakistan (Shaheed 2019). This study on general perception of student’s about Aurat Azadi March and its impacts on students' perception about women’s rights was aimed to investigate the role of media in its portrayal; the portrayal of Aurat March slogan, and the role of knowledge about Aurat Azadi March on student’s support and willingness of women rights. This study is quantitative and data collection is based on online survey techniques, while one conditional question was included in its questionnaire for ensuring the authenticity of respondents as university students, however other questions were based on multi-choice and Linkert scale. Targeted population of this study is the students from different universities in Pakistan. The sampling technique is a convenient random sample, however due to the online survey, the COVID-19 pandemic situation, and the nature of the topic the response rate of the respondents were limited to only 172 respondents from 30 different universities in Pakistan. The nature of this study is descriptive, while its findings are based on primary data. Theoretical framework of this study is based on two substantive and formal theories. There are 4 basic hypotheses of this study based on which it will address the study objective. All these hypotheses are formulated in such a way to address the following question of interest about Aurat Azadi March and student’s perception of it: first one is what is the role of media in representing the Aurat Azadi march and Student’s perception of it? Second one is the role of the Aurat Azadi March slogan in creating Ideology regarding women's rights. Third one is, Are Media and Misunderstanding create gape between Islamic and Liberal feminism. The tool for data collection has been delivered to students based both formal and informal common social media groups. The number of male student participants was 104 and the number of female student participants was 54. Half of the respondents claim that they support Aurat Azadi March, but students' support level and their perception about women's rights is not strong positively associated. Aurat Azadi March's slogan and perception about